Tiger Bound

by Doranna Durgin

  There, in the darkness just inside the tree line, he released her. Blue lightning flickered around him, enveloped him, licking out to brush her with its energies. The tingle of it rushed across her skin. Displaced air poofed out to stir her hair and clothes.

  And there he was.

  Just so casually as that, tiger.

  And the tiger yawned, and stretched again, offering a short, raspy refrain that this time served as a harsh purr. He lowered himself to the ground, rolling over to one side.

  She remembered to breathe again. She remembered who she was, what she was: Katie Rae Maddox, who could put her hands on bone and flesh and give it ease.

  She knelt behind his shoulders, resting her hands behind his ruff—surprised to find the hair slicker than expected, coarse and stiff and lying smooth.

  He rolled that massive head back to look at her, one front leg reaching for nothing in particular, the great paw spread to briefly knead air. And he made his little chuffing sound again, rasp-rasp-rasp, and Katie had the distinct impression he was laughing.

  “You,” she said, and poked him.

  He subsided, but his whiskers still twitched.

  “You,” she said, more of a murmur this time—as, kneeling there, she sank her fingers into his pelt and sank her being into her healing place.

  Into Maks.

  Chapter 12

  Tigers didn’t purr. Not like house cats; the tiger throat was made for a roar. But a tiger had a rasping faux-purr exhalation, a conversational chuff...an expressive groan.

  Maks used them all.

  She kneaded his shoulders, his spine, his legs...she even kneaded his toes, spreading his paws to check each joint, stretching and flexing. Utter luxury. When she was done he offered the first one all over again, stretching the toes wide without extruding his claws...a tiger’s flirt.

  She laughed, and when he rolled halfway to his back with his front legs splayed, utterly without dignity, she took him up on the invitation and scratched his chest and the base of his throat. “Not done yet,” she told him. “It’s going to take a little more to deal with your face.” She crossed her legs and patted her lap. Maks rolled to his chest to stare at her. “Yes, I mean it,” she told him. “I need to concentrate, so get comfortable.”

  He eased closer, draping his neck over her leg and letting the weight of his head settle in her lap. She stroked along his jaw; she felt along his ears, petted his whiskers...dared to lift his lip and touch a tooth. He flicked an ear and let her have her way.

  Truth be told, he nearly fell asleep.

  He woke fully from that doze when the energies grew strong, tugging at his face—burning. He flattened his ears back, lifting his head—or starting to.

  “Don’t be a baby,” she said, absent words in the throes of deep concentration. He smacked his tail against the ground, offended, and settled back down. After a time, the tug and burn eased. She took a deep breath and stroked from his broad nose along his cheeks and up by his ears, a gesture of finality.

  His tension ebbed away; he breathed out a deep rumble of satisfaction and pushed his head gently into her hand.

  She leaned over his ear. “Men,” she murmured, the teasing already evident even in that one word. “You’re so easy.”

  His ears flattened; he rolled to his feet, and her gasp of surprise changed to understanding as the bright, shifting energies of the change bloomed around them. By the time he came to his knees he had fully become the man, barefooted, pine needles clinging to flannel.

  Easy?

  But he didn’t have to say it; she saw his aggrieved expression and laughed out loud.

  As the laughter faded, she reached out to stroke his cheek. Still tender, but no more than that. “Maks,” she said. “It worked. I didn’t know if I could do that without...” She trailed off, smiled, and shrugged. “Without getting lost in you.”

  Maks gave way before her, reaching out with his wordless, wild inner voice. He sent her his confusion, his desire...he sent her the very essence of who he was. Neither predator nor prey, but just Maks...and more vulnerable than she might ever guess.

  * * *

  Katie jerked as unexpected emotion washed through her—a wistfulness, a gentle touch of invitation...blatant honesty, but full of confusion and admiration and even pride.

  None of which were hers.

  “Maks?” she whispered.

  He cocked his head slightly, and the emotion shifted to relief—to something of gratitude.

  “That’s you? Those...feelings? It’s been you all along?” Those moments when he’d seemed silent, and yet during which she’d gotten some strong sense of him regardless.

  Not silent at all, apparently. Just not full of formed words. Maybe not such a surprise as all that, given how few of them he used in general.

  She touched his cheek again, where the wound was closed but still pink, readily discernible in her clear Sentinel’s night vision. He pushed against her hand, just a hint of pressure—the tiger’s gesture. His wordless voice touched her with a warmth—not so much a promise as an offering.

  “Maks,” she said again, barely audible.

  She’d insisted on this healing not just for him, but for her—to know, for certain, that she could indeed still work without losing herself in her patients...or in him. And now she knew. Whatever kept happening between them—the spark of desire, flaring hot and sudden, the clear flood of emotion and images, it wasn’t about her healing process.

  And in knowing, she found herself unexpectedly receptive to the warmth of his mental touch. She curved her hand back to his nape, stroking the sensitive skin under his ear with her thumb; she thrilled to it when he closed his eyes just to feel—and when he shared that with her. The tingle of tightening skin down the back of his neck suddenly found its way down hers, the responses it drew from within his body suddenly bloomed within hers.

  “Oh,” she breathed, startled by the understanding—by the sharing. For a long moment, he let her touch him; he let her experience what it did for him—and he let her absorb that it was about more than touch, it was about who was doing the touching.

  Katie in the sunshine, Katie with determination in her eye, Katie laughing...singing...bounding across the yard...Katie’s hands clutching at him, a sob of pleasure in her throat...

  She saw all that, and she saw through the matter-of-fact layers of civilized Maks to what had long lay beneath.

  The vulnerability. The feral honesty.

  His eyes fluttered open, fastening on her gaze—a tiger’s round pupils in a tiger’s eyes. She almost didn’t hear him—the merest hint of spoken words in her mind. ::Katie Rae.::

  “I’m here,” she said out loud, her low voice cutting into a night otherwise silent, with only the pines rustling above them and an occasional cicada burring through darkness.

  ::Be,:: he said.

  She let the touch of his emotions reach her; she fed hers back. She watched those feelings spiral, felt the tangle tighten between them until she wasn’t sure if her skin tingled, or his...if the growing heat pooling along her spine came from one of them or both of them.

  In the end it didn’t matter. They moved in the same instant, and by the time her hands wrapped around his neck, his had cupped her face. By the time little sparks of intensity fluttered low in her belly, he’d pushed up against her. By the time their lips met, it wasn’t Maks kissing Katie or Katie kissing Maks, but a fierce and mutual clash.

  But just that fast, his hands tensed around her face; his breath was lost in her mouth. An instant later she felt it, too—a sharp stab of hot iron in the deepest part of herself. No! Not again!

  He slammed personal shields up between them, wrenching himself away so abruptly that she cried out with the loss of him—and still she felt it, spreading like an inner flood from her solar plexus through her chest, down her belly, trickling into her limbs.

  By the time she opened her eyes, he’d twisted aside, a harsh gasp in his throat—and she realized then that what
ever she felt, it was only what little had leaked through, and that he still bore the brunt of it on his own.

  “Maks!” Oh, she wanted to touch him, to soothe him, to gather him up and hold him—and she had no idea if that would only make things worse.

  Because now she knew. This pain had not come on him because of her healing, or her visions, or any other thing she’d been worried about. This wretched reaction had come on him, as it always had, because of his response to her.

  Maybe he knew it, too. He looked up at her with eyes strained and bright, and the look on his face broke her heart nearly as much as his words.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” he said. “Maybe we can’t simply be, after all.”

  * * *

  When they headed back to her house, they did it in silence—somber, but with a lingering togetherness.

  The cat came to greet them with a little mrrp, tail high and cheerful, stropping himself against their legs.

  “Feeding time?” Maks asked. The memory, brought close to the surface these past days, came from nowhere—deplorable conditions, humans fed like beasts to force the change, jailers laughing. His mother, refusing to wean him because of it. Confusion and pain and wobbly cub legs, his mother’s fierce protection while he leaned against her warm flank...

  “What was that?” Katie said, startled.

  Maks no longer found himself surprised by her perceptiveness. “This place brings out memories.”

  “But...that was...” She frowned. “That felt so young. No one takes the change for the first time at that age.”

  And Maks said nothing, because what could he say? She was right. But she was also wrong. Maks had taken the change, driven by constant threat. And before long, he had preferred it.

  Katie shook her head. “I have so many questions,” she said. “But...”

  “But there are other things to deal with.” He took a step closer, reaching out to stroke his hand over the shine of her hair in the moonlight. He nodded at the house. “Wards aren’t enough. Shields aren’t enough. In the woods, I can hide you. I can keep you safe. Be human, be deer—it doesn’t matter. Let me protect you.”

  She crossed her arms, looking away from him. “You are protecting me. And I’ll see anything that comes our way, now that I’m looking.”

  “Would you? Truly?”

  The set of her mouth gave her away—vulnerable and dismayed, tight enough so one of those slightly pointed canines peeked out. “Maybe I’ve spent too many years denying the visions to count on them now. But I’ll figure out how to pull the meaning from them. I will.” Uncertainty crept into her voice. “Not deep into the woods, Maks. Not when I’d have to take the deer beside your tiger.”

  “Ssh, Katie Rae.” He stepped back, and that surprised her clearly enough—but he could see when the deer needed space. “Your decision.”

  She squeezed her upper arms in a self-hug. “I’ll go hunting for a seeing, that’s what. Though it’s been so long...I don’t even know if I remember how.”

  Maks didn’t think about it; he pulled her in close and held her, wrapping her in his own strength. Safe enough for him, without the passion behind it. “Ian needs time for the amulet. I need time to set up my own perimeter on this land. Nick needs time to send backup. That means you have time to work on visions.”

  His shirt muffled her faint laugh. “Just like that.”

  His affirmative went out without voice, simply driven by intent. To judge by the way she briefly tightened her arms around him, she got the message well enough.

  Only then did the haze wrap around him—his own personal random fog, with the edges thrumming in color separations and static building through his body. Dissonance rising, without apparent rhyme or reason.

  No. Not now, when she needed to feel safe.

  As if he could pretend to have a choice.

  Choice...

  Maybe he did, in a fashion. Because there was one thing that might cut through it, as it cut through everything else so far.

  “Maks, are you—” But her hand closed around his arm. “Someone’s coming.” He heard it, then—tires on the scattered gravel of the dirt road, someone driving too fast over the washboard section not far from her house, headlights flashing through the darkness. Surprise colored Katie’s voice, coming to his ears as if scraped through steel wool. “It’s Marie. At this time of night—?” She squeezed his arm again. “Stay put. I’ll go see.”

  The car crunched to a stop—a little too fast, sliding an instant before its halt. Just that quickly, the door opened, then slammed...too hard. Maks peered through the darkness, his night vision temporarily smeared into a surrealistic blur, the earth pulling at him through the tough soles of his oft-bare feet. He pushed his palms against his eyes. Go. Away.

  Marie’s voice rang out before Katie reached her, strident through the night. “Did you know? Did you?”

  Katie’s response was a soothing murmur, not something Maks could hear, not with the reverberation in his ears. Go. Away.

  Because he was all that Katie had right now. The only thing between her and the Core and the dark future of her visions, and she needed to be able to believe—

  “What about Lara Wilson’s dog? What about that cat?” Marie’s voice only rose higher, louder.

  Maks focused on Katie, on her sweetness and strength...on her warmth and compassion...on the determination for which she didn’t half give herself credit. He imagined the graceful press of her body against his, the long strong of his hand down her back, the perfect fit of his hand around her bottom.

  The pain shot through him, expected now—and cut through the fugue, giving him a window of clarity.

  “—gangrene!” Marie said. “How could you have known and not told me? How could you not have known?”

  Maks breathed in hard through his nose, nostrils flaring...letting it out slow. Thinking of Katie, moving against him. Katie, touching him—

  The two women stood by the car, Marie full of wild gestures and her voice full of tears, Katie full of quiet and calm and sadness. “I’m so sorry. I’d be glad to help—to look at him—”

  “Help!” Marie’s voice held bitter certainty. “Don’t you think it’s too late for that? Don’t you think maybe Roger Akins has been right all along?”

  Katie, with her eyes opened wide at their mutual surge of desire, his want for her throbbing harder than any fugue—

  And then it struck. As Marie slammed the car door closed and flung bitter parting words at Katie, accelerating away into the night, the pain came on strong, rising from within Maks in an eager tide. He sucked in air, stiffened...bent over himself. Free of the fugue, if not of the cure.

  Katie’s footsteps ran over fine dirt and coarse grass. “Maks—”

  He had no words, but he had all the intent in the world. He sent it her way, merciless. I’m okay. It’s okay. He forced himself upright and put his arms around her; and this time said it out loud. “It’s okay, Katie Rae.”

  She looked at him straight on through the night, tears streaking a face of grief and worry and fear. “Maks,” she said. “You’ll have to believe that hard enough for both of us.”

  Chapter 13

  As pain faded, the fugue driven away and all the questions still lingering, Maks stayed outside to check the wards and to lay his own thin, fine security wards. Katie stalked gracelessly into the house with every intent of starting the dinner they hadn’t yet had.

  Instead she detoured upstairs to wash her face, tuck her hair back up and try to flush the sound of Marie’s accusing voice from her ears.

  She’s upset. People said things when they were upset—striking out, no matter how unfair. No matter how they knew better.

  Oh, please, let Marie know better.

  The problem was Marie had a point.

  How could you have known, and not told me? How could you not have known?

  And Katie didn’t have an answer. It had been only a day earlier...and she’d seen the dog two weeks earlier, at that. F
or Rowdy to be dying of gangrene today...

  How could she not have known?

  She found herself on the bed, curled around a pillow...trying to make sense of it all.

  She found herself...

  Asleep.

  Splashing blood, a blur of startled green eyes, a muted roar and a cry of pain.

  She grabbed at the moment, even in her sleep—sinking her will into it, looking for details—grizzled fur, a bright, laughing eye, a dark scent of corruption—refusing to let it go. The glint of an amulet, the glint of a thousand amulets, piled one atop another and spilling out in an inescapable mountain turned to quivering unformed flesh and the dank smell of damp dirt and underground stone. Present and future, tangling together, pooling into disaster...

  And then something different, something more distant and yet more intense, a bigger place underground, a woman’s low voice singing in her ear...a child’s lullaby. Her exhortations. Live. Stay tiger. Stay strong. Be my son, always.

  “Katie.”

  That voice was comfort...warm breath on her ear, a nuzzle of a kiss on her neck. The press of strength around her body.

  She started awake.

  “Ssh,” he said. “Wake slowly. And then come and eat.”

  She realized that he’d cooked—the scent of broiled steak filled her house, along with the tang of sauce. It clung to him, homey and comfortable. She raised a sleepy brow at him. “I should be glad you cooked it first, huh?”

  He made a noise in his throat; it sounded like amusement and reproval both. “Salad for you,” he said, as though it were a punishment.

  What it was, she discovered, was a good salad. Tofu, snow peas, carrots and nuts, sesame dressing. “Since when have you cooked vegetarian?” she asked, balancing the generous bowl in her hand while she took a stab with her fork, having discovered that he’d already eaten.

  She found herself wishing he hadn’t—thinking that it would have been nice to sit down at the table together. Companionable. And that while she hadn’t hosted a non-vegetarian meal in her household for a very long time, she couldn’t imagine asking Maks to put aside his nature for hers.